What the Fantastic Beasts teaser says about JK Rowling's America

Harry Potter fans the world over are understandably excited about the first moving look at the forthcoming film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

Although the film, which will be released in November 2016, isn’t strictly a prequel to those adapted from JK Rowling’s seven Harry Potter books, readers are intrigued to see more of her wizarding world. Especially as it’s set in America, in 1926.

Sure, the prospect of freckled Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne bounding around as magizoologist (that an expert in magical creatures, Muggles) and saying words such as “smidge” is an enchanting one.

But as Potter fans know, it’s the little details that Rowling and the team behind the previous Potter films – producer David Heyman and four-time Potter director David Yates – do so well. Fantastic Beasts offers the first opportunity to see what the world outside of Hogwarts, and the UK, looks like.

These clips build on the clues Rowling has given about the American wizarding culture in the past. For instance, non-wizarding folk aren’t called Muggles, but “no-maj”, pronounced “no-madge”.

The writer, who makes her screenwriting debut with Fantastic Beasts, has also discussed the notion of a US equivalent of Hogwarts with fans on Twitter:

So although we won’t see the school in the film, we might hear more about it from its alumni.

Rowling added that the location of the school (as Cinemablend points out, it’s unlikely an American Hogwarts would be situated in New York for the same reason Hogwarts is in rural Scotland, rather than London) was decided by the indigenous, or Native American magic, upon which it was found, although it has an immigrant name.

The trailer shows the Magical Congress of the United States of America, which is the American version of the British Ministry of Magic, depicted in the films as a towering hub of shining green metro tiles, dark corridors and floo network fireplaces.

Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) in the Magical Congress of United States of America

The MCUSA is similarly dark and imposing, as shown in the opening clip, of Katherine Waterston as Tina Goldstein admitting that Newt Scamander (Redmayne) let a case of magical creatures loose in New York. However, this is a far larger hall of people than the round courtrooms we’ve seen the likes of Professor Umbridge appear in.

Dolores Umbridge in the Ministry of Magic

As spotted by Reddit user Yorkton, the official logo of the MCUSA has also been thought about, and has recognisably American symbols: an eagle and stars and stripes.

Seraphin, played by Carmen Ejogo, presents at the MCUSA

Elsewhere, scenes look like they could have been taken out of any other period film set in New York, with early cars, neo-gothic architecture and scruffy Lower East Side tenement blocks (like the one Colin Farrell, as Percival Graves, peers out of).

1920s America as depicted in the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them trailer

Colin Farrell, as Percival Graves, investigates a damaged building in the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them trailer

But we can guarantee there will be more unfamiliar scenes ahead. Rowling has clearly thought about this wizarding world as deeply as she has the British one. All of which makes Fantastic Beasts a fascinating prospect.